Yet if ever war came near to its final condemnation it was in 1914-1918.
Our comrades died bravely, and we had been willing to die, to put an end
to it once and for all. Indeed war-weary men heard the noise of conflict
die away on November 11, 1918, thinking that that end had been attained.
It is not yet three years ago; a little time, but long enough for
betrayal.

Long enough, too, for the making of many books about it all, wherein has
been recorded such heroisms as might make God proud and such horror as
might make the Devil weep. Yet has the truth been told, after all? Has
the world realized that in a modern war a nation but moves in uniform to
perform its ordinary tasks in a new intoxicating atmosphere? Now and
again a small percentage of the whole is flung into the pit, and, for
them, where one in ten was heavy slaughter, now one in ten is reasonable
escape. The rest, for the greater part of the time, live an unnatural
life, death near enough to make them reckless and far enough to make them
gay. Commonly men and women more or less restrain themselves because of
to-morrow; but what if there be no to-morrow? What if the dice are heavily
weighted against it? And what of their already jeoparded restraint when
the crisis has thrown the conventions to the winds and there is little
to lighten the end of the day?

Thus to lift the veil on life behind the lines in time of war is a
thankless task. The stay-at-homes will not believe, and particularly
they whose smug respectability and conventional religion has been put
to no such fiery trial. Moreover they will do more than disbelieve; they
will say that the story is not fit to be told. Nor is it. But then it
should never have been lived. That very respectability, that very
conventionality, that very contented backboneless religion made it